We identified in our previous blog post (Eating out in Australia: 2016 in Review) that staffing remains to be one of the biggest issues facing the hospitality industry not because there is a shortage of people to do the job but because there are less people doing the job well and being rewarded for it when they do which comes down to training and management.

When your staff and management are not up to scratch, you can start to lose your customers. This is something that has been identified in research and we’ve seen happen firsthand. On the flip side, good staff and good management make customers feel like they want to come back and continue to return. Here are the key positive and negative components of staffing and management that what makes a customer feel good or bad about their food and hospitality experience:

Positive Experience

A clean and well maintained space

Communicative staff who are friendly and appropriately trained

Staff who make a connection and show a sense of hospitality

Efficient, yet not overworked service

Negative Experience

Inconsistent service and rude staff

Poorly trained staff

Dirty and poorly maintained environments

A lack of leniency with customer requirements or needs

The fundamental issues that have been identified as ‘negative’ all come down to the way a food precinct or single operator are staffed and trained. With that said, the issues are also easily rectified if a solution is applied. The solution being, training.

Director, Francis Loughran's favourite place for good staff and service in Melbourne - The Kettle Black

So why invest in training for your staff?

Because by investing in training you can ensure everyone is on the same page, up to date with standards and offering the highest level of hospitality to customers which ultimately all result in a better customer experience. If your service standards as a centre manager, manager or operator are at a high level and you allow your staff the opportunity to meet you at that level by providing training to match, you are ensuring your business the best chance at successfully operating and gaining repeat business time and time again.

People want to know they will feel welcome, they want to sit in an environment that has been looked after when they enjoy their meal, they want to be offered a replicated experience from the staff down to the food presentation particularly if it was an extremely positive one - there is only one way that can happen and that’s through ensuring your staff and hospitality team is across what it means and how to put it into practice.

It can be as simple as applying a uniform greeting for staff members to use on customers or ensuring staff know when to change bins and what to look for to keep a space maintained. It can also be extensive by providing training protocols to centre management to ensure the entire precinct is looked after as a whole as at the end of the day, someone needs to be overseeing the entire space not just the individual outlets.